her talents, we rejoiced to learn that her Diary was about to be made
public. Our hopes, it is true, were not unmixed with fears. We could not
forget the fate of the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, which were published ten
years ago. That unfortunate book contained much that was curious and
{250}interesting. Yet it was received with a cry of disgust, and was
speedily consigned to oblivion. The truth is, that it deserved its doom.
It was written in Madame D’Arblay’s later style, the worst style that
has ever been known among men. No genius, no information, could save
from proscription a book so written. We, therefore, opened the Diary
with no small anxiety, trembling lest we should light upon some of that
peculiar rhetoric which deforms almost every page of the Memoirs, and
which it is impossible to read without a sensation made up of mirth,
shame, and loathing. We soon, however, discovered to our great delight
that this Diary was kept before Madame D’Arblay became eloquent. It
is, for the most part, written in her earliest and best manner, in true
woman’s English, clear, natural, and lively. The two works are lying
side by side before us; and we never turn from the Memoirs to the Diary
without a sense of relief. The difference is as great as the difference
between the atmosphere of a perfumer’s shop, fetid with lavender water
and jasmine soap, and the air of a heath on a fine morning in May.
Both works ought to be consulted by every person who wishes to be well
acquainted with the history of our literature and our manners. But to
read the Diary is a pleasure; to read the Memoirs will always be a task.
We may, perhaps, afford some harmless amusement to our readers, if we
attempt, with the help of these two books, to give them an account of
the most important years of Madame D’arblay’s life.
She was descended from a family which bore the name of Macburney,
and which, though probably of Irish origin, had been long settled in
Shropshire, and was possessed of considerable estates in that county.
Unhappily, {251}many years before her birth, the Macburneys began, as
if of set purpose and in a spirit of determined rivalry, to expose and
ruin themselves. The heir apparent, Mr. James Macburney, offended his
father by making a runaway match with an actress from Goodman’s Fields.
The old gentleman could devise no more judicious mode of wreaking
vengeance on his undutiful boy than by marrying the cook. The cook
gave birth to a son named Joseph, who succeeded to all the lands of
the family, while James was cut off with a shilling. The favourite
son, however, was so extravagant, that he soon became as poor as his
disinherited brother. Both were forced to earn their bread by their
labour. Joseph turned dancing master, and settled in Norfolk. James
struck off the Mac from the beginning of his name, and set up as a
portrait painter at Chester. Here he had a son named Charles, well
known as the author of the History of Music, and as the father of
two remarkable children, of a son distinguished by learning, and of a
daughter still more honourably distinguished by genius.
Charles early showed a taste for that art, of which, at a later period,
he became the historian. He was apprenticed to a celebrated musician in
London, and applied himself to study with vigour and success. He soon
found a kind and munificent patron in Fulk Greville, a highborn
and highbred man, who seems to have had in large measure all the
accomplishments and all the follies, all the virtues and all the vices,
which, a hundred years ago, were considered as making up the character
of a fine gentleman. Under such protection, the young artist had every
prospect of a brilliant career in the capital. But his health failed. It
became necessary for him to retreat from the smoke and {252}river fog of
London, to the pure air of the coast. He accepted the place of organist,
at Lynn, and settled at that town with a young lady who had recently
become his wife.
At Lynn, in June, 1752, Frances Burney was born. Nothing in her
childhood indicated that she would, while still a young woman, have
secured for herself an honourable and permanent place among English
writers. She was shy and silent. Her brothers and sisters called her a
dunce, and not without some show of reason; for at eight years old she
did not know her letters.
In 1760, Mr. Burney quitted Lynn for London, and took a house in Poland
Street; a situation which had been fashionable in the reign of Queen
Anne, but which, since that time, had been deserted by most of its
wealthy and noble inhabitants. He afterwards resided in Saint Martin’s
Street, on the south, side of Leicester Square. His house there is still
well known, and will continue to be well known as long as our island
retains any trace of civilisation; for it was the dwelling of Newton,
and the square turret which distinguishes it from all the surrounding
buildings was Newton’s observatory.
Mr. Burney at once obtained as many pupils of the most respectable
description as he had time to attend, and was thus enabled to
support his family, modestly indeed, and frugally, but in comfort and
independence. His professional merit obtained for him the degree of
Doctor of Music from the University of Oxford; and his works on subjects
connected with his art gained for him a place, respectable, though
certainly not eminent, among men of letters.
The progress of the mind of Frances Burney, from her ninth to her
twenty-fifth year, well deserves to {253}be recorded. When her education
had proceeded no further than the hornbook, she lost her mother, and
thenceforward she educated herself. Her father appears to have been as
bad a father as a very honest, affectionate, and sweet tempered man
can well be. He loved his daughter dearly; but it never seems to have
occurred to him that a parent has other duties to perform to children
than that of fondling them. It would indeed have been impossible, for
him to superintend their education himself. His professional engagements
occupied him all day. At seven in the morning he began to attend his
pupils, and, when London was full, was sometimes employed in teaching
till eleven at night. He was often forced to carry in his pocket a tin
box of sandwiches, and a bottle of wine and water, on which he dined in
a hackney coach, while hurrying from one scholar to another. Two of his
daughters he sent to a seminary at Paris; but he imagined that Frances
would run some risk of being perverted from the Protestant faith if she
were educated in a Catholic country, and he therefore kept her at home.
No governess, no teacher of any art or of any language, was provided for
her. But one of her sisters showed her how to write; and, before she was
fourteen, she began to find pleasure in reading.
It was not, however, by reading that her intellect was formed. Indeed,
when her best novels were produced, her knowledge of books was very
small. When at the height of her fame, she was unacquainted with the
most celebrated works of Voltaire and Moliere; and, what seems still
more extraordinary, had never heard or seen a line of Churchill,
who, when she was a girl, was the most popular of living poets. It is
particularly deserving of observation that she appears {254}to have been
by no means a novel reader. Her father’s library was large; and he had
admitted into it so many books which rigid moralists generally exclude
that he felt uneasy, as he afterwards owned, when Johnson began to
examine the shelves. But in the whole collection there was only a single
novel, Fielding’s Amelia.
An education, however, which to most girls would have been useless, but
which suited Fanny’s mind better than elaborate culture, was in constant
progress during her passage from childhood to womanhood. The great book
of human nature was turned over before her. Her father’s social position
was very peculiar. He belonged in fortune and station to the middle
class. His daughters seemed to have been suffered to mix freely with
those whom butlers and waiting maids call vulgar. We are told that they
were in the habit of playing with the children of a wigmaker who lived
in the adjoining house. Yet few nobles could assemble in the most
stately mansions of Grosvenor Square or Saint James’s Square, a society
so various and so brilliant as was sometimes to be found in Dr. Burney’s
cabin. His mind, though not very powerful or capacious, was restlessly
active; and, in the intervals of his professional pursuits, he had
contrived to lay up much miscellaneous information. His attainments,
the suavity of his temper, and the gentle simplicity of his manners, had
obtained for him ready admission to the first literary circles. While
he was still at Lynn, he had won Johnson’s heart by sounding with honest
zeal the praises of the English Dictionary. In London the two friends
met frequently, and agreed most harmoniously. One tie, indeed,
was wanting to their mutual attachment. Burney loved his own art
passionately; and Johnson {255}just knew the bell of Saint Clement’s
church from the organ. They had, however, many topics in common; and on
winter nights their conversations were sometimes prolonged till the fire
had gone out, and the candles had burned away to the wicks. Burney’s
admiration of the powers which had produced Rasselas and The Rambler
bordered on idolatry. Johnson, on the other hand, condescended to growl
out that Burney was an honest fellow, a man whom it was impossible not
to like.
Garrick, too, was a frequent visiter in Poland Street and Saint Martin’s
Lane. That wonderful actor loved the society of children, partly from
good nature, and partly from vanity. The ecstasies of mirth and terror,
which his gestures and play of countenance never failed to produce in a
nursery, flattered him quite as much as the applause of mature critics.
He often exhibited all his powers of mimicry for the amusement of the
little Burneys, awed them by shuddering and crouching as if he saw a
ghost, scared them by raving like a maniac in Saint Luke’s, and then at
once became an auctioneer, a chimneysweeper, or an old woman, and made
them laugh till the tears ran down their cheeks.
But it would be tedious to recount the names of all the men of letters
and artists whom Frances Burney had an opportunity of seeing and
hearing. Colman, Twining, Harris, Baretti, Hawkesworth, Reynolds, Barry,
were among those who occasionally surrounded the tea table and supper
tray at her father’s modest dwelling. This was not all. The distinction
which Dr. Burney had acquired as a musician, and as the historian of
music, attracted to his house the most eminent musical performers of
that age. The greatest {256}Italian singers who visited England regarded
him as the dispenser of fame in their art, and exerted themselves
to obtain his suffrage. Pachierotti became his intimate friend. The
rapacious Agujari, who sang for nobody else under fifty pounds an air,
sang her best for Dr. Burney without a fee; and in the company of Dr.
Burney even the haughty and eccentric Gabrielli constrained herself to
behave with civility. It was thus in his power to give, with scarcely
any expense, concerts equal to those of the aristocracy. On such
occasions the quiet street in which he lived was blocked up by coroneted
chariots, and his little drawingroom was crowded with peers, peeresses,
ministers, and ambassadors. On one evening, of which we happen to have
a full account, there were present Lord Mulgrave, Lord Bruce, Lord and
Lady Edgecumbe, Lord Barrington from the War Office, Lord Sandwich from
the Admiralty, Lord Ashburnham, with his gold key dangling from his
pocket, and the French Ambassador, M. De Guignes, renowned for his fine
person and for his success in gallantry. But the great show of the night
was the Russian ambassador, Count Orloff, whose gigantic figure was all
in a blaze with jewels, and in whose demeanour the untamed ferocity
of the Scythian might be discerned through a thin varnish of French
politeness. As he stalked about the small parlour, brushing the ceiling
with his toupee, the girls whispered to each other, with mingled
admiration and horror, that he was the favoured lover of his august
mistress; that he had borne the chief part in the revolution to which
she owed her throne; and that his huge hands, now glittering with
diamond rings, had given the last squeeze to the windpipe of her
unfortunate husband.
With such illustrious guests as these were mingled {257}all the most
remarkable specimens of the race of lions, a kind of game which is
limited in London every spring with more than Meltonian ardour and
perseverance. Bruce, who had washed down steaks cut from living oxen
with water from the fountains of the Nile, came to swagger and talk
about his travels. Omai lisped broken English, and made all the
assembled musicians hold their ears by howling Otaheitean love songs,
such as those with which Oberea charmed her Opano.
With the literary and fashionable society, which occasionally met under
Dr. Burney’s roof, Frances can scarcely be said to have mingled. She was
not a musician, and could therefore bear no part in the concerts.
She was shy almost to awkwardness, and scarcely ever joined in the
conversation. The slightest remark from a stranger disconcerted her:
and even the old friends of her father who tried to draw her out could
seldom extract more than a Yes or a No. Her figure was small, her face
not distinguished by beauty. She was therefore suffered to withdraw
quietly to the background, and, unobserved herself, to observe all that
passed. Her nearest relations were aware that she had good sense,
but seem not to have suspected that, under her demure and bashful
deportment, were concealed a fertile invention and a keen sense of
the ridiculous. She had not, it is true, an eye for the fine shades of
character, but every marked peculiarity instantly caught her notice and
remained engraven on her imagination. Thus, while still a girl, she had
laid up such a store of materials for fiction as few of those who mix
much in the world are able to accumulate during a long life. She had
watched and listened to people of every class, from princes and great
officers of state down to artists {258}living in garrets, and poets
familiar with subterranean cookshops. Hundreds of remarkable persons had
passed in review before lier, English, French, German, Italian, lords
and fiddlers, deans of cathedrals and managers of theatres, travellers
leading about newly caught savages, and singing women escorted by deputy
husbands.
So strong was the impression made on the mind of Frances by the society
which she was in the habit of seeing and hearing, that she began to
write little fictitious narratives as soon as she could use her pen
with ease, which, as we have said, was not very early. Her sisters were
amused by her stories: but Dr. Burney knew nothing of their existence;
and in another quarter her literary propensities met with serious
discouragement. When she was fifteen, her father took a second wife.
The new Mrs. Burney soon found out that her stepdaughter was fond of
scribbling, and delivered several goodnatured lectures on the subject.
The advice no doubt was well meant, and might have been given by the
most judicious friend; for at that time, from causes to which we may
hereafter advert, nothing could be more disadvantageous to a young lady
than to be known as a novel writer. Frances yielded, relinquished her
favourite pursuit, and made a bonfire of all her manuscripts. (1)
She now hemmed and stitched from breakfast to dinner with scrupulous
regularity. But the dinners of that time were early; and the afternoon
was her own. Though she had given up novelwriting, she was still
(1) There is some difficulty here as to the chronology.
“This sacrifice,” says the editor of the Diary, “was made in
the young authoress’s fifteenth year.” This could not be;
for the sacrifice was the effect, according to the editor’s
own showing, of the remonstrances of the second Mrs. Burney:
and Frances was in her sixteenth year when her father’s
second marriage took place.
{259}fond of using her pen. She began to keep a diary, and she
corresponded largely with a person who seems to have had the chief share
in the formation of her mind. This was Samuel Crisp, an old friend
of her father. His name, well known, near a century ago, in the most
splendid circles of London, has long been forgotten. His history is,
however, so interesting and instructive, that it tempts us to venture on
a digression.
Long before Frances Burney was born, Mr. Crisp had made his entrance
into the world, with every advantage. He was well connected and well
educated. His face and figure were conspicuously handsome; his manners
were polished; his fortune was easy; his character was without stain; he
lived in the best society; he had read much; he talked well; his taste
in literature, music, painting, architecture, sculpture, was held in
high esteem. Nothing that the world can give seemed to be wanting to
his happiness and respectability, except that he should understand the
limits of his powers, and should not throw away distinctions which were
within his reach in the pursuit of distinctions which were unattainable.
“It is an uncontrolled truth,” says Swift, “that no man ever made an ill
figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.”
Every day brings with it fresh illustrations of this weighty saying; but
the best commentary that we remember is the history of Samuel Crisp. Men
like him have their proper place, and it is a most important one, in the
Commonwealth of Letters. It is by the judgment of such men that the rank
of authors is finally determined. It, is neither to the multitude, nor
to the few who are gifted with great creative genius, that we are to
look for sound critical decisions. The multitude, unacquainted {260}with
the best models, are captivated by whatever stuns and dazzles them. They
deserted Mrs. Siddons to run after Master Betty; and they now prefer, we
have no doubt, Jack Sheppard to Von Artevelde. A man of great original
genius, on the other hand, a man who has attained to mastery in some
high walk of art, is by no means to be implicitly trusted as a judge of
the performances of others. The erroneous decisions pronounced by such
men are without number.
It is commonly supposed that jealousy makes them unjust. But a more
creditable explanation may easily be found. The very excellence of a
work shows that some of the faculties of the author have been developed
at the expense of the rest; for it is not given to the human intellect
to expand itself widely in all directions at once, and to be at the
same time gigantic and well proportioned. Whoever becomes pre-eminent in
any art, nay, in any style of art, generally does so by devoting himself
with intense and exclusive enthusiasm to the pursuit of one kind of
excellence. His perception of other kinds of excellence is therefore
too often impaired. Out of Ins own department he praises and blames at
random, and is far less to be trusted than, the mere connoisseur, who
produces nothing, and whose business is only to judge and enjoy. One
painter is distinguished by his exquisite finishing. He toils day after
day to bring the veins of a cabbage leaf, the folds of a lace veil, the
wrinkles of an old woman’s face, nearer and nearer to perfection. In
the time which he employs on a square foot of canvass, a master of a
different order covers the walls of a palace with gods burying giants
under mountains, or makes the cupola of a church alive with seraphim and
martyrs. The more fervent the passion of each of these artists {261}for
his art, the higher the merit of each in his own line, the more unlikely
it is that they will justly appreciate each other. Many persons who
never handled a pencil probably do far more justice to Michael Angelo
than would have been done by Gerard Douw, and far more justice to Gerard
Douw than would have been done by Michael Angelo.
It is the same with literature. Thousands, who have no spark of the
genius of Dryden or Wordsworth, do to Dryden the justice which has
never been done by Wordsworth, and to Wordsworth the justice which,
we suspect, would never have been done by Dryden. Gray, Johnson,
Richardson, Fielding, are all highly esteemed by the great body of
intelligent and well informed men. But Gray could see no merit in
Rasselas; and Johnson could see no merit in the Bard. Fielding thought
Richardson a solemn prig; and Richardson perpetually expressed contempt
and disgust for Fielding’s lowness.
Mr. Crisp seems, as far as we can judge, to have been a man eminently
qualified for the useful office of a connoisseur. His talents and
knowledge fitted him to appreciate justly almost every species of
intellectual superiority. As an adviser he was inestimable. Nay, he
might probably have held a respectable rank as a writer, if he would
have confined himself to some department of literature in which nothing
more than sense, taste, and reading was required. Unhappily he set his
heart on being a great poet, wrote a tragedy in five acts on the death
of Virginia, and offered it to Garrick, who was his personal friend.
Garrick read, shook his head, and expressed a doubt whether it would
be wise in Mr. Crisp to stake a reputation, which stood high, on the
success of such a piece. But {262}the author, blinded by ambition, set
in motion a machinery such as none could long resist. His intercessors
were the most eloquent man and the most lovely woman of that veneration.
Pitt was induced to read Virginia, and to pronounce it excellent. Lady
Coventry, with fingers which might have furnished a model to sculptors,
forced the manuscript into the reluctant hand of the manager; and, in
the year 1754, the play was brought forward.
Nothing that skill or friendship could do was omitted. Garrick wrote
both prologue and epilogue. The zealous friends of the author filled
every box; and, by their strenuous exertions, the life of the play
was prolonged during ten nights. But, though there was no clamorous
reprobation, it was universally felt that the attempt had failed. When
Virginia was printed, the public disappointment was even greater than
at the representation. The critics, the Monthly Reviewers in particular,
fell on plot, characters, and diction without mercy, but, we fear, not
without justice. We have never met with a copy of the play; but, if we
may judge from the scene which is extracted in the Gentleman’s Magazine,
and which does not appear to have been malevolently selected, we should
say that nothing but the acting of Garrick, and the partiality of the
audience, could have saved so feeble and unnatural a drama from instant
damnation.
The ambition of the poet was still unsubdued. When the London season
closed, he applied himself vigorously to the work of removing blemishes.
He does not seem to have suspected, what we are strongly inclined to
suspect, that the whole piece was one blemish, and that the passages
which were meant to be fine, were, in truth, bursts of that tame
extravagance into {263}which writers fall, when they set themselves
to be sublime and pathetic in spite of nature. He omitted, added,
retouched, and flattered himself with hopes of a complete success in the
following year; but in the following year, Garrick showed no disposition
to bring the amended tragedy on the stage. Solicitation and remonstrance
were tried in vain. Lady Coventry, drooping under that malady which
seems ever to select what is loveliest for its prey, could render
no assistance. The manager’s language was civilly evasive; but his
resolution was inflexible.